Abstract
Care for young children continues to highly influence the life chances of men and women, even more so when they are migrants. For migrant women, childcare remains a particular challenge when their kin are absent and the gendered norms of work and family life abroad diverge from what they have known in the country of origin. This article contributes to a deeper understanding of social class and childcare strategies of migrant women by combining two research projects with migrants from Poland to Germany and the UK. Accounts represented in this article depict the ways in which migrant mothers interpret and use the available childcare options, thereby highlighting how class-based resources are deployed and reproduced in two different welfare regimes. The comparative approach pursued in the article reveals that it is neither class nor national context that has a capacity to determine early childcare choices on its own. Instead, it is an intricate interplay of social protections’ availability, gender norms and social class, which together engender various childcare strategies.
Highlights
From the inception of the gender lens into migration studies in the early 1980s (Morokvasic, 1984), the topic of childcare was seen as a burning issue for migrant mothers (Hondagneu-Sotelo & Avila, 1997)
It has been shown before that mothers differently use childcare facilities according to their class (Lareau, 2000; Jensen, 2010), these insights have not been sufficiently applied to the distinct realities of migrant motherhood
We look at how social class patterns early childcare choices of women from Poland who have migrated to Germany and the United Kingdom
Summary
From the inception of the gender lens into migration studies in the early 1980s (Morokvasic, 1984), the topic of childcare was seen as a burning issue for migrant mothers (Hondagneu-Sotelo & Avila, 1997). Literature has extensively dealt with (transnational) care provisions pertaining to the challenges linked to childcare (Zontini, 2006; Ryan, 2007; Ryan, Sales, Tilki, & Siara, 2008; Kofman, 2012; Baldassar & Merla, 2014; Barglowski, Bilecen, & Amelina, 2015; Barglowski, Krzyżowski, & Świątek, 2015; Pustułka, 2016) These are undergirded by the fact that relocating abroad largely entails changes in women’s social relations and mothering practices, often devoid of support from the kinship members as a direct consequence of mobility. Parenting young children is tangibly interlinked with the scope and span of social protections available in a given welfare regime
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